comfort food (or food to listen to appetite for destruction to)

i hope you like fried chicken and guns n' roses. read on.

There are entries in our culinary lexicon, like foodie and comfort food that make me want to punch a baby penguin*. Foodie (cringe)? Really, you like food huh? Cool. I'm really big into breathing air. That's my thing: air. A need isn't a hobby. That's just being lazy (also not a hobby). And comfort food? Comfortable how? Comfortable like farting in front of your significant other? Comfortable like wade boggs settling in for a cross country flight? I don't need my food adjectives to evoke belucosity or the ballplayers of my youth tying one on**. Nevermind that comfort food is actually the gateway to discomfort (who doesn't overdo it?), it just sounds weird to me. Like calling food "fun". Why would you need to eat fun? You don't go to a picture show because you're hungry. And your stomach doesn't go "look, I'm really empty here and everything, but could you play that shake your ass song by Mystikal? I'm just looking for a good time." Dumb.

Whatever. That said, comfort food totally rules.

Yes, the term is a little twee***. It's also evocative & I get it. I'm thinking warm, filling, not-too-challenging to the palate stuff. Kids' stuff. Stuff that takes you back. Like Appetite for Destruction or whatever album you grew up on. Yes indeed, Appetite is the comfort food of sounds (honorable mention) & not a certain later GnR offering.****

In fact, where are you Weird Al? Appetite lays the perfect framework for a concept food parody album (appetite for consumption?):

maybe it's just the knife, but i'm comforted

Welcome to the Jungle-- Welcome to My Mouth Hole

Out to Get Me-- Out to Get Beef

Mr Brownstone-- Mr Brown..fuck...uhhh... pone… I don't know. Work in progress.

Think About You--Think About Food

Rocket Queen-- Refried Bean
(here's a haaaaam/and you're a refried bean/ooooh yeeeaaah…)

This stuff practically writes itself. Anyway, here's some food so comfortable you'll swear there's a Barcalounger in your mouth.

Notes: this is a bit of a rerun, as I already covered fried chicken. Ignore the old recipe. This is far far superior & I will always do it this way from now on. The combination of the buttermilk marinade & spiking the flour mixture with a bit of corn starch (thank you korean fried chicken for giving me that idea) gives the chicken a perfect, crispy, slightly crunchy crust. Plus pan frying in the cast iron is simple. Lastly, I had steamed broccoli and mac 'n' cheese with this. I can't do MnC better than the stuff from the box, so no recipe there. And the broccoli... steam it for 10 minutes. chop it up. end of recipe.



Pan fried chicken
(so comforting I ate it all. It's the equivalent of 10 chicken wings)

5 chicken wings (not the "wing" and drumette, the full-on wingage)*****
1 cup flour
1/4 cup corn starch
Oil for frying

for marinade:
1/2 pint buttermilk
seasoning (I used cumin, paprika, garlic powder)
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp hot sauce or to taste


mix together the marinade ingredients. pour marinade in a freezer bag with the chicken and toss to coat the chicken. refrigerate several hours.

stare vacuously at the ground.

mix the corn starch and flour in a bowl. take the chicken pieces out of the marinade, shaking excess off, & drop them in the bowl. toss to coat.

let the chicken stay out until it gets kind of a gluey sticky exterior. this is the buttermilk bonding with the flour & starch & is what's going to give you that great crust.

pour oil about half way up in a cast iron skillet & heat it to about medium, maybe a little less. do it slowly. If you get cast iron too hot, you'll have smoking oil and a pan that wants to stay too hot.

fry the pieces for about 20 minutes, flipping and rotating once, midway through. they should be brown and basically cooked through.

turn the heat to med-hi. fry 3-5 more minutes, flipping the pieces. This is just to get them super crispy. they'll look browner after being out of the oil a few minutes, so don't overdo it.

drain on paper towels, dust with salt, let the pieces rest a few minutes & enjoy.


 *not really. I usually think seafaring birds are bullshit (Because they are. What are you doing? Ever heard "it's for the birds"? They're not talking about swimming.), but come on…. look at these little bastards! I might even smuggle one home from a a zoo, only to realize later that raising a penguin is harder, less sitcom-ish than I thought & then abandon it in a field where it will be free.
**but I do like wade boggs getting hammered memes. also, Boggsy is purported to have eaten fried chicken before every game. No wonder he's in the Hall of Fame!
***kinda like the term "twee". I had to do the right thing and punch myself in the stomach after I wrote that.
****it's sure as fuck not Chinese Democracy. You took it too far Axl, especially when you ate Van Morrison and took to wearing his skin as a raincoat.
*****keeping the wing whole allows you to have sort of a chicken wing kebab. The chicken's wing provides the familiar drumette & "wing" you get with buffalo wings. This simply keeps it in tact, plus the wing tip acts as a little fried handle.

cottage pie with grits

I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to call this. Most people would simply call it a play on shepherd's pie. But I, like any self respecting know-it-all, can't simply stand by and let that happen. You go out to most pubs and order shepherd's pie (like this one) and it's made with beef. That's a cottage pie dude. I'm no rube*. Shepherd's pie is made with lamb. I don't know any shepherds who herd cattle.** Although I do know a few sadistic cattle barons who brand sheep on opposite day.

That said, all the (self) righteous indignation in the world isn't gonna stop people from calling  a cottage pie a shepherd's pie. So be it. I bet if I ask these guys, they'd say either is OK. And I trust them. ***

In any event, the shepherd's pie/cottage pie model is a great one for incorporating leftovers, on-hand stuff or minimal-effort ingredients into a new dish. It's kinda like a casserole. Think about it-- layer some shit together and heat it up. Sounds like a casserole. This dish is unique in that I've substituted grits for mashed potatoes. Which is, pardon my french, la merde putain. The stew is a leftover chili spiced beef stew with chickpeas. More of a quick jaunt than a departure from the usual meat filling of beef or lamb, carrots, peas & gravy. What you get is a cottage pie that evokes other dishes****, but is still clearly a cottage pie. And it works. The beauty of the cottage pie setup, just like blues music, lies in the simplicity of its structure-- a basic frame allowing for nearly endless variation within, but still identifiable by that frame.

I ate the hell out of this dish.

dude, it was freezing in there

note- you'll need a ramekin to make a single serving, but of course you could double or triple it or whatever, depending on your leftover sitch.


cottage pie with grits

(serves, well just ask yourself how hungry you are)

what it'll take:
3/4-1 cup frozen ('course it doesn't have to be frozen) leftover beef stew of some sort. chili would work. i don't wanna condone using campbell's chunky, but im sure it'd work
1/2 tsp horseraddish
3tbsp quick grits
an egg
1/4 cup or so cheddar jack cheese

ok, grits you get a caption too

salt

while you thaw out your stew (i had a mild chili based beef stew with tendor chunks of beef and chickpeas, some fresh poblano. went a little overboard on the chickpeas, as you may be able to see. but i like chickpeas, so thats cool) preheat oven to 400.

stir horseraddish into stew and add a little (tbsp or two) water or beef stock. it needs to look slightly too soupy. a lot of mousture is lost in the form of steam and you dont want it to dry out.

prepare the grits as for one serving on the label. 3 tbsp grits, 1 cup water. 4 minutes in the microwave.

beat in egg and stir in the cheese, reserving 1/3 to sprinkle on top. ladle on top of the stew.

not campbell's. not at all

top with remaining cheese and bake for about 35 minutes. top should be set, puffy and getting some color.

The stew part gets really hot, so after admiring that crust, crack that mother open a little and let some steam escape. I didn't add enough cheese on top--I wanted a browner crust. You could hit the top with olive oil spray to help with that. A sprinkling of rosemary in the stew would've been nice. A golden bidet that grants wishes would be nice too, but you can't have it all. All said, a really good dish, where trying something different with an established favorite doesn't frankenstein it up too bad.




*hayseed? maybe. greenhorn? sure. aficionado of fine youtube clips? absolutely. but not a rube.
**i dont know shepherds at all, although i did once say on live radio that i worked as a shepherd. i did not win the steely dan tickets btw.
***i trust them because their show is awesomely nerdy & that's just a trustworthy trait
****chili & cornbread comes immediately to mind

get outta my dreams, get into my gullet

chicken & waffles

Look, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that this is anything more than an ad hoc post; just wanted to put up the 2 pictures. We both know that. We also both know that chicken and waffles is a fad enjoying a run of popularity that'll soon be gone. Not gone gone, but back to the relative status it held before*, like a 70's actor making a comeback in a Tarrantino flick. Chicken and waffles isn't a game changer. It's not lollipop cupcakes or vending machines that sell nachos. But whatever. I enjoy it.

i'm just a little fella

I'll miss chicken and waffles. It's an oddball combo that sounds like it was invented by a 9 year old stacking plates on a Luby's tray (or better) with reckless abandon, all while planning to get two desserts. I had eaten a ton of both dead bird and waffles in my 10 or 11 years before I even became aware that they could co-exist on the same plate. Thank you Fresh Prince (whatever happened to that dude?) for teaching me... If you can't trust something you learned about by watching Fresh Prince, what can you trust?

*Stuff like shrimp and grits too. You just can't imprint regional comfort foods on somebody when they're 30 or 40.